There’s a reason rabbis are cautioned away from mixing politics with religion. Illustration by Forward Collage/Canva
Contributing Columnist
Sruli Fruchter
July 9, 2025
American politics today is notoriously cruel, corrupt and power-hungry. Now, religion is at risk of becoming the same.
On Monday, the Internal Revenue Service moved toward tossing out a decades-old ban on clergy endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, arguing in a court filing that such acts should instead be viewed as private matters, like a “family discussion concerning candidates.”
If that policy change is enacted, it may spell disaster for the rabbinate. The idea that what passes between a rabbi and their congregation is private represents an acute misunderstanding of what synagogues ought to be, and their function in Jewish life.
The prophet Ezekiel described the synagogue as a “miniature” Temple — a stand-in for the Jewish people’s holiest site, where God-consciousness and religiosity reign supreme. For this reason, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher and leader Maimonides wrote that it is mandatory for Jews to show deference and respect toward the house of prayer, ensuring that its sanctity is not compromised.
Part of that sanctity has to do with the synagogue’s apolitical character. Gathering Jews to pray together; celebrating life cycle events; following weekly Torah portions; engaging in Torah study; and enjoying the richness of Jewish tradition in a communal setting — these are crucial communal functions, with no relationship to governmental policy, elections or whatever political happenings are dominating the news cycle.
And many rabbinical functions — like counseling congregants, teaching Torah classes and delivering sermons — require relationships of trust with congregants, which become harder to build when politically tense subjects intrude.
“You mix religion and politics,” the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks cautioned in 2020, “you get terrible politics and even worse religion.”
I understand why some might see the IRS’ move as a necessary step in ensuring that rabbinic leaders do not stand idly by in the face of political injustice. The Orthodox leader Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik recorded his grandfather — the unparalleled Torah scholar Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik — describing the rabbi’s responsibility to “redress the grievances of those who are abandoned and alone, to protect the dignity of the poor, and to save the oppressed from the hands of his oppressor.”
His words echo those of the Psalmist, who wrote that only one who “walks wholesomely, acts justly, and speaks truthfully in his heart” may dwell with God. While religious inspiration and practice are central to Judaism, so is ethical action.
It’s fair to ask, then, whether a rabbi can effectively perform their role without weighing in on politics, an area to which many Jews’ sense of ethics is deeply connected.
The answer, I think, is that when a rabbi becomes a political advocate, political tribalism can slowly start to define synagogue life, isolating congregants from one another and recasting religion as yet another avenue for societal division.
This was an issue long before the IRS turned course.
According to the Jewish People Policy Institute, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox sermons in the United States dealt with politics about 50% of the time before the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, that percentage surged to about 80% across all denominations. (Rabbis have always been allowed to engage with political issues in their leadership, but not to make active endorsements from the pulpit.)
I know many people affected by this shift. A close friend recently lamented to me about his struggles in searching for an Orthodox synagogue in his city where he could worship without hearing constant praise for President Donald Trump — in other words, a place in which to simply be religious. Another friend described his alienation when his rabbi abruptly weighed in on past elections and scolded those, like my friend, with Republican leanings.
If we want to ensure that synagogues remain spaces where all feel welcome, then rabbis must leave politics at the door. This doesn’t mean rabbis should be silent when it comes to moral issues. It just means they need to be more tactful — and not tie those issues to any given political candidate.
For example, a rabbi can urge congregants to practice and prize truth and honesty, and be wary of the threats of falsehood, without explicitly invoking President Donald Trump’s incessant lies or former President Joe Biden’s concerted cover-up of his inability to serve.
Emphasizing Judaism’s focus on compassion and care for the stranger — our history as a nomadic people and our religious commandments to open our homes to others — will point to issues of immigration policy. Discussing Judaism’s insistence on law and order can speak to rising political violence without addressing criminalization and policing.
This is more than a semantic point. Judaism is neither Democratic nor Republican. Our tradition is rife with endless opinions, qualifications and conflicting values. Those nuances make an objective “Jewish position” on a political issue nearly impossible. Speaking to Torah values, however, empowers congregants to read between the lines and draw their own conclusions — all while maintaining the rabbi’s role as a moral voice.
We are all privy to the ways in which politics have already decimated families and communities. We must ensure it does not do the same to our synagogues.
